Lance Armstrong ready for recycling

"The seat is five inches too high," Armstrong said and bike technicians came running with screwdrivers and furrowed brows. Armstrong squinted to look at numbers that measure his pedal cadence, his oxygen intake, his calorie burning. He was here to re-perfect his bicycle form.

His competitive urge? That is just fine.

Armstrong, 37, is strongly into a cycling comeback that brought him to a Texas time-trial race last weekend (the Tour of Gruene, which Armstrong won), and here Tuesday to become immersed in the serious work of sculpting the body and tweaking the bike.

After more than three years removed from competitive racing, Armstrong announced last summer that he would compete in 2009 at races like the Amgen Tour of California in February and at the quirky Giro d'Italia -- where the leader wears pink instead of yellow -- in May.

But Armstrong has refused to commit himself to riding at the Tour de France, the race he won a record seven consecutive times, a race that gave him international sporting fame and the yellow jersey that turned into his own symbol -- a yellow rubber wristband -- to demonstrate support for cancer survivor Armstrong's foundation, Livestrong.

He hemmed and hawed again Tuesday, saying he wasn't playing games about his indecision but that above all else he wanted to avoid what he called "tension" in this comeback project.

Then, speaking more bluntly, he said his final two rides at the Tour de France were "not fun" and that short of becoming a French citizen, "and maybe not even then," he didn't think there was any way he and France could kiss and make up.

And with that, Armstrong got back on the bike and Chris Carmichael, his longtime physical trainer, was asked whether he would be surprised if Armstrong didn't ride in the 2009 Tour.

"I would be very surprised," Carmichael said.

It was a verbally feisty and physically fit Armstrong who allowed the media to take a peek at his wind tunnel training.

On the Trek bike, the same model he rode at the 2005 Tour, Armstrong fiddled with everything -- the bars, the seat, the pedals. Off the bike, Armstrong was chatty.

The subject of Linus Gerdemann came up. Last week, Gerdemann, a 26-year-old German cyclist, called Armstrong's return a bad thing.